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Let Merritt Landry go in peace: James Varney

Marigny teenager burglaries map 2

This map shows the sites where teenager Marshall Coulter allegedly attempted house burglaries. Coulter was shot last July by a Marigny homeowner, Merritt Landry, after Coulter scaled a fence on to Landry's property at 2 a.m. and was allegedly casing the side of the house.

They say timing is everything. One suspects the Marigny homeowner Merritt Landry would agree.

At this point, any further law enforcement moves against Landry are not only pointless but also vengeful. What he's gone through up to now is understandable and regrettable; it is obviously time to drop any pending charges against him and allow him and his family to move on.

That's because Marshall Coulter, the teenager Landry shot in the dark after Coulter indisputably trespassed on Landry's property, is a bad guy. That's one piece of the timing.

Also, in tense situations in the dead of night not everyone knows the race of the other person. That is, Landry may not have known the race of the teen with crime on his mind. And even if he had, that was incidental. No one can seriously argue that Landry fired his gun because Coulter is black.

To think he did presumes that if Coulter were white Landry would have put down his gun and asked the young man what he could do for him.

&amp;amp;lt;a href="http://polldaddy.com/poll/8026021/"&amp;amp;gt;At this point, with allegations of additional burglaries and a home invasion mounting against teenager Marshall Coulter, the authorities should&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;

No, when your wife is pregnant and you have a baby, and someone has scaled a fence and is creeping around your driveway - and all of this takes place at 2 a.m. in a city plagued with crime - Landry's response makes sense. The blame for the entire unfortunate action and response rests entirely on Coulter's shoulders.

Coulter has now been arrested for breaking into another home in the same neighborhood. I confess I was astounded at the news, not because I for a moment thought Coulter was anything but trouble -- but because I thought the teenager was still recuperating from the horrible wound he suffered last July.

As if the entire narrative around Coulter's situation is not now suspect, authorities have also booked him in a 2012 home invasion in which he ran off with the victims' gun. Further, another Marigny resident now claims Coulter is the person captured on video surveillance trying to enter another house.

It's hard to believe anyone ever thought Coulter, whom a family member described as a "professional thief" last year, was the victim of a racial incident, or a poor, misunderstood youth. And it is here that the second element of timing lurks.

Coulter got shot when the nation was still raw over the Trayvon Martin incident in Florida. When the situation involved an "unarmed black teenager" and a white man shooting said teenager in the head, the obvious truth that Landry operated in self-defense was either lost or regarded by authorities as insufficient. A spark could have triggered unrest; much easier to simply arrest Landry and charge him with a serious crime.

That's the understandable part. And certainly there were people who jumped on the Trayvon comparison bandwagon, as wheel-less as that vehicle was. Indeed, people who should have known better (or did know better and were self-aggrandizing rather than pursuing any sort of "social justice") carried signs in Marigny with Coulter's and Martin's names.

It's curious that encounters in the middle of the night among various races have such potential to be twisted. I don't mean in the way the participants regard each other, but in the aftermath when such encounters turn awful and make the news. Coulter's shooting was never about race, but race tinges it to such an extent even seemingly precise language is loaded.

For example, reports say "Landry shot the unarmed teenager in the head." Yet it would be just as accurate, and probably more truthful, to say, "In the inky darkness, uncertain if the man was armed or his precise criminal purpose, Landry fired at the intruder, striking him in the head."

Instead, in the aftermath of Trayvon Martin, Landry finds himself a white man accused of shooting a black youth. The cops, well aware of the overarching situation, arrest Landry on an attempted second-degree murder charge.

Obviously people need to tread carefully when race is in the air, and some of those marching in the Marigny ought to be more careful about injecting race into a situation where it wasn't a factor. Nevertheless, here we are. Where does that leave Landry?

Still in limbo. That should end. It is irrelevant at this point that Landry didn't know the criminal background (or future) of his would-be burglar. Coulter meant Landry, Landry's child and Landry's pregnant wife no good.

Every black and white person in New Orleans dealing with crime and the fear of crime knows exactly what happened here. The authorities need to let the city know Merritt Landry has nothing to fear from them.